There’s a joke that crops up whenever companies like Uber, Lyft, and BlaBlaCar talk about ridesharing. “’Shared mobility’? This already exists: it’s the bus,” says Citymapper founder and CEO Azmat Yusuf. “It's sort of like Uberpool, but you put fifty people on it.”

While other tech startups have focused on cars, Citymapper has always prioritised public transport. The app, launched in 2012, suggests public transport routes – buses, metros, rail, and cycling – in 40 cities worldwide. But processing millions of journeys highlighted a problem: buses haven’t changed much since their first introduction in the 19th century. “All these other things are getting smarter and better, but why aren’t buses?” says Yusuf. So Citymapper is taking a somewhat surprising step: creating buses of its own.

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On May 9, WIRED can exclusively reveal, Citymapper will launch a bus in central London. Called CMX1, the route will run from Southwark – near the company’s headquarters – to Blackfriars, west to Waterloo bridge, and back along the south bank. Although it’ll use existing bus stops, it won’t look like your regular London bus: for one, it’ll use smaller, 30-seater vehicles, dubbed “Sprinters”, painted bright green. Inside, the company has redesigned the bus experience: seats will offer USB charging points, large displays will advise users on when to get off. Up front, the driver will use a custom-built tablet interface to stay informed in real-time on traffic, passenger numbers, and headway (the distance between vehicles) advised by a central controller using Citymapper’s demand data.

Citymapper

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CMX1 will only run for two days – "we're calling it a pop-up bus route," says Yusuf. But it's the first step in Citymapper's grander vision. Ultimately, the company wants to offer bus routes that vary dynamically in response to demand, and offer “Waze buses” that would stop at regular points, but adjust route according to traffic conditions. Internally, the company has experimented with ways for the app and the bus itself to interact, for example telling specific passengers when to get off. “We want to start by showing we can do this [route] well,” says Yusuf. “But this is the first part of a conversation.”

The move is an unusual one for a software company. Sharing economy startups like Airbnb and Uber, famously, don’t own properties or vehicles. Buses are a different ballgame. The idea came from Citymapper’s user data. “It was when we started analysing our data, and saying, ‘why don’t the buses do something different to what they do?” says Yusuf. “That led to the conclusion that: well, if we know what to do, then what about the wild idea of us trying to do it ourselves?”

Citymapper

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Citymapper’s route is built on masses of open transport data – maps, traffic, public transport timetables and live bus feeds. Add to that routes generated each time a user clicks “Go”. Citymapper doesn’t release user numbers, but Yusuf has previously claimed the app is on half of London’s smartphones. Multiply that by 40 cities and that’s a lot of journeys.

Using its own data, the company can analyse in near real-time the transport demand across a city. So it built an internal simulation tool, referred to as ‘sim city’, to test how additional routes would impact demand. “Because we have a lot of behavioural data, in terms of the real journeys people have taken, we can then see how new changes would affect that behaviour,” says Omid Ashtari, Citymapper’s president and head of business.

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Drag-and-drop a route in sim city, for example, and the app will not only pull through every stop on the route, but populate them with behavioural data: who gets on and off, where, and when. It will then estimate, for example, the number of vehicles needed to serve demand; estimate income, and generate an efficiency score.

In many ways, London is not an ideal launching point; it has a comprehensive bus network compared to many other major global cities. “TFL is doing a pretty good job already,” says Ashtari. Even so, sim city showed that demand is so high at peak times that some routes remain under-served. Yusuf highlights the opening of the Night Tube, which led to a spike in late night travel demand that buses have yet to react to.

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“We've found some gaps in the system where buses are not reacting. We can react faster to changes in the city than an agency would be able to do,” he says. (CMX2, depending on TFL approval, may be a night route.)

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There lies Citymapper’s biggest challenge: regulation. Transport For London already issues licenses for private buses – for example, for sightseeing tours – and has embraced open data. But there’s currently no framework in place that would permit flexible buses; to really change how buses operate will require a change in regulation. CMX1 will be free for passengers, in part because charging would require a license. “We’d love to see existing frameworks expanding, so we can do more interesting things,” says Yusuf. “One of the things we're really excited about trying to do is a more reactive bus, something we call Demand Response, which responds more to the needs of people.” Under current frameworks, that’s not permitted. But Yusuf says TFL is “open to it”.

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Citymapper's route for success

“We are very much open to new ideas and are actively engaging tech companies and innovators on some of the challenges facing the city,” says Michael Hurwitz, director of transport innovation at TFL. “Citymapper has some very interesting ideas and we’re in discussion with them about how they might work in London.”

Citymapper’s approach is unusual: many tech companies, particularly in the transport space, have been resistant to working with regulators. (Uber famously, favours a strategy for ‘regulatory arbitrage’; becoming so popular with users that cities change their laws.)

“We’re based in London, we know London,” says Yusuf. “But all cities have transport problems. We think there are lots of cities that could benefit from this kind of bus tech. We’re hoping to start a conversation about how a new type of company can make this happen.”

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There is likely another reason behind the move: money. Despite its success, the Citymapper app is rumoured not to generate much in the way of revenue. CMX1 is being funded by venture capital. Ultimately, the company hopes to be able to run buses that charge fares; Citymapper won’t say how much a journey will cost (but added it would be “equivalent” to existing prices). “We’re not really monetising as a company,” admits Yusuf. “This makes money. So we think if we can do this well, it will pay for itself.”

“There’s a crisis of the commons, to a certain extent,” say Ashtari. “Cities are growing, you have congestion, pollution, all these problems are popping up. Transporation is bang-smack at the centre of it, and we felt the responsibility to do something that contributes.”

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“If you're going to solve those problems, private and public have to work together. We don't believe the future of the city is privately-owned, single-occupancy vehicles, but probably a smart bus that uses the road space in a much more efficient way.”